And then there were three.
The New York Jets’ Aaron Glenn, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Todd Bowles, and the Houston Texans’ DeMeco Ryans are the only remaining Black head coaches in the National Football League, a league in which roughly 67% of the players are Black.
The NFL is composed of 32 franchises with 53-man active rosters and up to 17 players on each team’s respective practice squad. At the start of this season, there were six Black NFL head coaches, including the Miami Dolphins’ Mike McDaniel, who is bi-racial. But McDaniel and the Atlanta Falcons’ Raheem Morris were fired after their teams’ final regular season games — neither made the playoffs — and Mike Tomlin, who had led the Pittsburgh Steelers for a remarkable 19 seasons, stepped down on Tuesday after losing to the Houston Texans 30-6 at home on Monday night in an AFC wild-card match-up.
Tomlin has never had a record below .500 in all the years coaching the Steelers and won the Super Bowl in the 2008-2009 campaign. He steered the Steelers back to the Super Bowl in the 2010-2011 season, losing to the Green Bay Packers, who were ironically quarterbacked by Aaron Rodgers, the Steelers’ QB in Tomlin’s final game with the franchise.
“This organization has been a huge part of my life for many years, and it has been an absolute honor to lead this team,” Tomlin said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful to Art Rooney II and the late Ambassador Rooney for their trust and support. I am also thankful to the players who gave everything they had every day, and to the coaches and staff whose commitment and dedication made this journey so meaningful.
I want to also thank Steelers Nation. Your passion, loyalty, and high expectations represent what makes this franchise truly special. Coaching in Pittsburgh is unlike anywhere else, and I will always take great pride in having been a steward of this team.”
The annual outcry by proponents of merit-based DEI, regarding the lack of Black NFL head coaches, is not superfluous. It is a mandate to bring attention to hiring practices that are inherently racialized and culturally driven. The Rooney Rule, established in 2003 and named after the late former Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, who at the time of its implementation was the NFL’s chairman of its DEI Committee, was designed to initially increase minority head coaching hires, then expanded to front office general manager and executive positions. Its impact can be fairly characterized as ploddingly incremental, and at times two steps forward and three steps backwards.
The stagnation isn’t a case of the unproven Bell Curve, a construct arguing genetically based differences in intelligence between races, putting forth the general premise that Blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. No, it is ostensibly more so the owners’ comfort level with white coaches — being one of two optically prominent figures of a franchise, the other being the starting quarterback.
There are currently nine NFL head coaching openings. Tomlin could have one of them if he desires. Along with John Harbaugh, who was let go by the Baltimore Ravens after the Ravens lost 26-24 to the Steelers in the final game of the regular season, he is the most coveted of all available coaches. The Ravens’ defeat to the Steelers on an emotionally-crushing, potential game-winning field goal missed by rookie Tyler Loop gifted the Steelers the AFC North title and eliminated the Ravens from earning a playoff spot. It also ended Harbaugh’s 18-year tenure as the Ravens’ head coach, which included a Super Bowl victory in 2012, and extended Tomlin’s departure from Pittsburgh by nine days.
The score, how many Black head coaches will be running teams next season, hasn’t been decided. In a sport in which gambling is an unconstrained force powering its unparalleled popularity in American culture, the over-under for how many Black coaches will be hired during this annual cycle should be set at less than four.
The race card will always be played by someone, because racial justice will never be achieved and that goes for white Asians Latino black etc. Stop talking about it. maybe it will go away
Just like terrorism. Ignore it and it will go away 🙂.
Ok Elvis he stole black music ??? It will never go away it’s in the DNA of this country . The NCAA is the same 12% black coaches 60% black players. 32 NFL teams 3 Blac Coaches?
I wonder I’ve you would be saying the same thing if the roles were reversed
I wonder if you would be saying the same thing if the roles were reversed